Steele County Secures Government Connectivity with Extreme Fabric
Published: August 21, 2024
Steele County, Minnesota is a rural county with a population of nearly 40,000. The county has complex network requirements in terms of servicing both county departments and MNPrairie, a joint association serving multiple counties. Steele County's IT team is responsible for supporting approximately 470 users across multiple departments and locations, implementing technology to meet the evolving needs of its government, and supporting criminal justice networks as well as other services.
The county's network configuration involved a mix of state-managed and locally controlled fiber connections, which created hurdles in provisioning new VLANs and managing network traffic. Previously, this required coordination with state IT services, leading to delays and complications. The adoption of Extreme Fabric Connect has transformed this process, allowing the county's IT team to manage and provision their network independently, without the need to involve state services. This has resulted in significant time savings and improved network agility.
In addition to simplifying network management, Extreme's solution has provided enhanced security features through encryption and seamless routing capabilities. The IT team now benefits from the ease of deploying new services and creating redundancy within their network infrastructure. This flexibility has been particularly valuable for critical services such as the Sheriff's Office, jail management, and community corrections, ensuring reliable and secure network operations.
The ease of deployment for Fabric is huge. The way it figures out the complex networking details on its own is incredibly beneficial for us in terms of the speed we can deploy new services.
Challenges
- Complexity in managing multiple departments and locations over a shared network.
- Significant delays when coordinating with state ISP on provisioning VLANs.
- Security and regulatory challenges with routing sensitive data through state networks.
- Required more granular control over network resources.
Extreme Solutions
- Extreme Wireless
- ExtremeCloud IQ
- Extreme Fabric Connect
Results
- Extreme Fabric makes partnering with the state ISP simple. Fabric automatically handles routing through the switches, eliminating the need to provision individual VLANs.
- Significant time savings when deploying new services. “A potential week … I can do it in about a couple of minutes,” Cousins said.
- Secure infrastructure met the demands of government regulations and CJIS compliance, eliminating barriers to supporting those agencies.